This Sunday is the annual Eddie Awards, where the American Cinema Editors hand out their yearly awards for best editing in varying categories of film and television. Don’t forget to watch it on television.

Oops, you can’t. It’s not on TV. But to get up-to-the-minute results, I’m going to try and Twitter the results as they happen. Come and follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/schnittman.

A.C.E. (the American Cinema Editors organization — there the three letters you see after the names of a lot of editors out there) is running what looking like an incredible event on the second Friday and Saturday in August. Its called EditFest and will give you an opportunity to “Learn about the craft of editing from the working experts.” It start on Friday evening with a welcome reception at Universal Studios with the ACE board members and ACE Interns. The next day is split between Saturday morning, where top television editors will be on a two-hour panel, and the afternoon, where there are three events — Editors of Summer Blockbusters, Animation Editing, and Cutting for Comedy.

It looks like an amazing event. “Tuition” is $349 and looks well worth it.

You can see a few more details, including contact information, by downloading this postcard or going to the ACE website.

A.C.E. has some interesting videos posted documenting a panel discussion about editing that was held at the LA Film School in early 2007. Panelists included editors Stuart Bass, A.C.E., Tchavdar Georgiev, and Stephen Rivkin, A.C.E. along with assistant editors Andrew Charlton, Meagan Keane, and Alan McCurdy. It was moderated by Harry Miller, A.C.E.

The videos of the panel are divided up into four parts. A breakdown is as follows (each line links to the mentioned video):

Worth the time investment, there is a great behind the scenes feel to these clips. Note that there are three assistant editors on this panel, as well as the editors. This is a great balance since, as Harry B. Miller (moderator) says up front — assistants make editing possible. The assistants end up speaking to some of the issues closest to students’ hearts — how to get a job after school

One side note, two of the panelists were students of mine at USC (Meagan and Tchavdar).

About Norman Hollyn

Norman Hollyn has been described as a “media expert,” a reference to his experience in a wide variety of media types – in both the old and new media worlds.

He is a long-time film, television and music editor (HEATHERS, THE COTTON CLUB, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, Oliver Stone’s WILD PALMS), and is Associate Professor and Head of the Editing Track at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. He is an author of nearly 100 articles and his book, THE FILM EDITING ROOM HANDBOOK, has been internationally translated. His new book, THE LEAN FORWARD MOMENT, comes out from Peachpit Press/Pearson in December.

He has taught worldwide, including several workshops for the Royal Film Commission in Jordan. He has taught at the Sundance Film Festival, and consults and speaks at major corporations such as Dreamworks Pictures and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has worked as an expert witness in legal cases involving the aesthetics or history of editing, and is partner in an Internet development firm. He presently editing and co-directing a documentary about architecture called OFF THE GRID and editing an international long-distance collaborative documentary called RIVERS.